Percival Everett, Ling Ma among nominees for critics prizes

NEW YORK (AP) – Fiction by Percival Everett and Ling Ma, non-fiction by Annie Proulx and biographies by George Balanchine and J. Edgar Hoover are among the finalists for the National Book Critics Circle awards. Former US Poetry Prize winner Joy Harjo has received an honorary award for her lifetime achievement.

Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch, winner of last fall’s National Book Award for Fiction, is nominated for Best First Feature. Other finalists announced Tuesday night include Ed Yong’s “An Immense World,” which recently won a Carnegie Medal from the American Library Association, and the poetry collection “Milkweed Smithereens” by Bernadette Mayer, which aged in November of 77 years died.

The winners will be announced on March 23 during a ceremony in Manhattan. In addition to Harjo’s award, NBCC will also present honorary awards to former Critics Circle president Barbara Hoffert, San Francisco bookstore City Lights, and critic Jennifer Wilson, who writes for The Nation and The New York Times.

Fiction nominees include Everett’s novel Dr. No, Ma’s Bliss Montage story collection, Namwali Serpell’s The Furrows, and two works in translation: Jon Fosse’s A New Name: Septology VI-VII and Mieko Kawakami’s All the Lovers in the Night.

Finalists in the autobiography are Jazmina Barrera’s “Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes”, Hua Hsu’s “Stay True: A Memoir”, Dorthe Nors’ “A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast”, Darryl Pinckney’s “Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan” and Ingrid Rojas Contrera’s “The Man Who Could Move Clouds”.

In the bio, the nominees are Beverly Gage’s Hoover biopic “G-Man”, Jennifer Homans’ “Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century, Kerri K. Greenidge’s The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman’s Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life, and Aaron Sachs’ Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Louis Mumford and Rediscovery in Dark Times.”

Pulitzer Prize-winner Margo Jefferson’s Constructing a Nervous System is a critical finalist, along with Rachel Aviv’s Strangers to Ourselves, Timothy Bewes’ Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age, Peter Brooks’ Seduced by Story and Alia Trabucco Zerán’s When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold.

In the non-fiction section, alongside Yong Proulx’s environmental study “Fen, Bog, & Swamp”, Isaac Butler’s “The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act”, Kelly Lytle Hernandez’ “Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands” nominated” and Joseph Osmundson’s collection of essays “Virology”.

Meyer was a finalist in the Poetry category, along with Mosab Abu Toha’s Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, Cynthia Cruz’ Hotel Oblivion, David Hernandez’ Hello I Must Be Going, and Paul Hlava Ceballos’ Banana. .

The NBCC is awarding a translation prize for the first time. The nominees are Boris Dralyuk’s Russian translation of Andrey Kurkov’s Gray Bees, Jennifer Croft’s Polish translation of Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, Fady Joudah’s Arabic translation of Maya Abu Al-Hayyat’s You Can Be the Last Leaf”, Mara Faye Lethem’s Catalan translation of Irene Solà’s “When I Sing, Mountains Dance”, Christina MacSweeney’s Spanish translation of Barrera’s “Linea Nigra” and Mark Polizzotti’s French translation of Scholastique Mukasonga’s “Kibogo. ”

Gunty is credited alongside Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers, Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, Zain Khalid’s Brother Alive, Maud Newton’s Ancestor Trouble, Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez, and Vauhini Vara’s The Immortal King Rao”.

The NBCC was founded in 1974 and has more than 600 members from across the country.

Hillel Italy, The Associated Press